UK - Trainspotters on rampage

[John Ashworth]

Trainspotters on rampage: Vintage rail enthusiasts are facing a ban over claims of yobbish behaviour
By CHRISTIAN WOLMAR
Mail Online
Last updated at 9:46 AM on 07th December 2008

They trundle around Britain’s railway network, harmlessly recreating, it seems, the innocence of a bygone age.

But now train enthusiasts who charter vintage rolling stock for day trips are being warned their hobby could be banned because of drunken and yobbish behaviour.

Enthusiasts have been spotted yelling at people as they pass through stations – an activity dubbed as ‘bellowing’ – and hanging as far as possible out of old-style train windows, known as ‘flailing’.

Last month, during one trip between Preston and London, two men had to be ejected from a heritage train being pulled by a Class 40 diesel engine manufactured in the Fifties.

One refused to stop leaning out of a window and shouting at people, and the train was delayed at Leeds while police were called to deal with another man who had provoked a fight.

The carriages were left in ‘a disgusting state’ by the drunken enthusiasts and required special cleaning.

As a result, the operator, West Coast Railway, which owns the carriages, said it would cancel future trips if tighter policing by stewards was not enforced.

The chairman of the Class 40 Preservation Society, John Stephens, said he was furious about the unruly behaviour on the Preston to London charter, which he blamed on ‘a small group of outsiders’.

‘These yobs and troublemakers came from a group of lads who got on the train with an 80-pint barrel of beer at 6.30 in the morning and drank all the way to London,’ he said.

‘We carried the can for their behaviour but it was nothing to do with us.’

On a ‘Christmas special’ tour yesterday for dozens of enthusiasts of the classic Class 40 locomotives between Shrewsbury and Lincoln, participants were given a list of strict rules.

Flailing, leaning out of the windows, smoking and drinking alcohol before 10am were banned.

Mark Honey, boss of Rail Blue Charters, which organised yesterday’s tour, said: 'We are taking a zero-tolerance line on this. Future charters will be heavily policed by stewards.’

In June, an incident involving a man seen perilously leaning out of a train on a trip organised by Spitfire Tours led to an official complaint by Network Rail.

The company wrote to Spitfire threatening to withdraw its licence to operate if there were further incidents.

A spokesman for Network Rail said: ‘We don’t want to tar everyone with the same brush but we will clamp down on bad behaviour very strongly.’

One rail expert said that the craze for travelling behind particular types of locomotive was an extension of trainspotting.

He said that each class of locomotive attracted a different set of fans, often depending on which part of the country the trains were most common – but those drawn to diesels from the Fifties seemed to be the rowdiest.

‘They are allowed out to play by their wives or mums and get so excited when they are being hauled by their favourite type of engine they end up behaving like football hooligans,’ he said.

The group with one of the worst reputations is the so-called Peak Army, who followed ‘Peak’ Class 45 diesels produced in the Fifties, he added.

He said they were known in the Eighties for throwing toilet seats out of the window and were described in one rail magazine as ‘the Millwall of rail enthusiast groups’.

Pictures on the internet show a group of 45 enthusiasts at a 2004 Peak Army reunion giving a Nazi-style salute.

[Tom Macrery]

I guess we have not gotten this bad (yet?).

[John Ashworth]

Racist abuse by a mob of drunks on a heritage train? "Bellowing" and "flailing"? Fighting? Leaving the carriages in "a disgusting state"? A "group of lads who got on the train with an 80-pint barrel of beer at 6.30 in the morning and drank all the way to London", if you replace "London" with "Bela Bela" and "barrel" with "cool box"? Smoking (on a non-smoking train)?

Hmm. Sounds like a few FOTR trains that I can remember, although in our defence the culprits are members of the general public, not heritage rail fans as in the UK incidents.

[M. Hardy-Randall]

Regrettably it does not have to be drunk youths.

Recently on a train from Bern to Brig on the Italian border a young English speaking couple entered the carriage and decided to have a sort of picnic, leaving all the wrappings on the floor and to make matters worse they decided to change the baby's diaper which was also left on the floor. When I asked them if they would kindly remove the rubbish I was told by the women to do something that is biologically impossible!

A special cleaning team was called to clean the carriage in the 20 minute turn around.

Malcolm